Sally Abrahms

Caregiving

Sally Abrahms is a long-time contributor to AARP with both a personal and professional interest in caregiving. For the last 12 years, she cared for her father, then her mother and now her mother-in-law. She covers aging and boomers and has written for TIME, Newsweek, the New York Times, USA Today and the Huffington Post.

Finally, employers seem to be getting the message that many of their workers have caregiving demands. Increasingly, both nonprofit and for-profit companies are offering workplace flexibility, paid and unpaid leave, and resource and referral services, according to the 2014 National Study of Employers released today by the Families and Work Institute (FWI), along with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). The study polled 1,051 employers with 50 or more employees. “The findings indicate that the issue of family caregiving is on the radar of …

What makes someone age 50+ want to stay in their community – or want to leave? For most, the answer is feeling safe and having good schools. Those are the two top answers from more than 4,500 people age 50+ surveyed for a just-released AARP Public Policy Institute (PPI) report on what older adults feel is important for what is termed a “livable community.” (I’m guessing that excellent schools are connected to higher property values and perceived as contributing to a quality …

You may feel you have stark choices for frail and elderly family members: Keep them at home without the help and support they need, or help them move to an assisted living facility or a nursing home to get those services. A new report from the Center for Housing Policy (CHP) encourages a third possibility: getting services for them in their home and community. The report, produced by the research arm of the National Housing Conference, says that option is less expensive and allows …

The family members who provide care for the nation’s wounded veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars need more support than they’re getting, says a study of military caregivers released today by the RAND Corporation. The largest-ever survey of more than 1,000 military caregivers found that 25 percent are soldiers’ parents, many of whom are growing older themselves and who will not always be up to the task. “These post 9/11 caregivers are providing invaluable support to the veterans they’re caring for,” says Rajeev Ramchand, a behavioral …

If Mom or Dad has dementia, using adult day services (ADS) just twice a week can reap surprising psychological and physical benefits for family caregivers. Yes, caregivers. According to a new Pennsylvania State University study, ADS can reduce caregivers’ emotional distress and may even protect against illness. It turns out that a hormone in the body produced by the adrenal gland, DHEA-S, gets depleted when you’re under chronic stress – and caregiving is unquestionably stressful. The study suggests that ADS probably gives …

If you are a woman, a new report from the Alzheimer’s Association might just jolt you upright. Consider: Women in their 60s are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease sometime in their lives as they are to develop breast cancer. They have a 1 in 6 chance of developing the disease. A man’s chances are 1 in 11. Three out of 5 people with Alzheimer’s are women. Women are 2.5 times more likely than men to provide the 24-hour, hands-on care at …